The smell hit me out of nowhere: an uncanny whiff of sweaty socks. I instinctively glanced around for another hiker. My guide, local naturalist Olasee Davis, laughed and pointed to a thick brown seed pod lying on the trail. It had fallen from a West Indian locust, more commonly known as a stinking toe tree.
The culprit loomed farther down the trail, its massive limbs weaving a vaulted canopy overhead. “It tastes better than it smells,” Olasee said, picking up the pod and cracking it open on a rock to reveal the powdery pulp inside. I watched him take a bite but decided to pass. I suspected stinking toe fruit was an acquired taste, and with only a few days remaining on my trip to St. Croix, I'd save the acquiring for a future visit.
An aerial view of St. Croix
As we continued along, Olasee introduced me to other tropical evergreens, including the soursop, laden with spiky fruit, and the red manjack, much shorter and shrubbier, with brownish-red berries. Around the next bend he pointed out nonnative fruit trees: papaya from South America and mango from India. But he hadn't brought me here just for the botany. He'd brought me to understand why this forest matters.
As an ecologist, historian, and assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, Olasee helped lead the effort to establish Maroon Sanctuary Territorial Park in 2025. Encompassing 2,469 acres in the northwest corner of St. Croix, the park protects part of Maroon Country, the island's steep, forested interior where people who had escaped slavery found refuge during the 1700s and early 1800s. The new park also safeguards former sugar plantations and mill sites, which have been slowly returning to nature since Denmark ended slavery in the Danish West Indies (present-day US Virgin Islands) in 1848. By that time more than 100,000 enslaved Africans had passed through the port of Christiansted on St. Croix, the largest of the islands, to be sold to plantation owners in the Danish Caribbean sugar economy.
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North shore of St. Croix
Olasee and I were following an old plantation trail through one such former estate when he suddenly stopped and then scrambled up a steep embankment into the trees. I followed, brushing aside slender branches. Hidden beneath the understory, almost swallowed by spider lilies, was a burial ground. Most graves were marked with conch shells. Some were covered by low, weathered concrete slabs. One was marked by a headstone, its inscription softened by decades of moisture and lichen. The hidden cemetery wasn't an isolated discovery. For more than 40 years, Olasee has bushwhacked his way through Maroon Country to search for burial grounds and other traces of those who escaped slavery, documenting sites that would otherwise disappear beneath the forest. Now that it's been conserved as a territorial park, that work can continue in a more systematic, permanent way. Or as Olasee put it, “I could die in peace now.”
The patio at seafood spot Ama
Travelers have traditionally come to the USVI for beach vacations and sailing charters; now Maroon Sanctuary is opening up another side to the islands. The park's founders are also building out an official trail network. The roughly 10 miles of trail that I explored with Olasee were a patchwork of former estate roads, plantation footpaths, and forgotten forest routes that he'd pieced together over decades. Soon these trails will be easier to navigate without needing someone like Olasee to lead the way. The next morning I met Kristina “Kitty” Edwards, director of the US Virgin Islands Division of Territorial Parks & Protected Areas, at a trailhead on the slopes of 1,165-foot Mount Eagle, the island's highest peak. We were about to hike the first official segment of the trail, a three-mile loop designed for hiking and mountain biking, which opened this past May. When completed, the trail system will wend 30 miles through the forested backcountry.
As excited as Kitty was to show off the new path, a first of its kind on the island, she wasn't in a hurry. “I'm a meanderer,” she said with a shrug and a smile. In the shirt-soaking heat of the tropics, I was grateful to take it slow. We ascended amid white-winged butterflies and yellow-breasted bananaquits. After an hour we reached the stone remnants of the old watchtower that marked the summit. A spur trail led us to an overlook where we paused to take in the 270-degree view, bookended by emerald peaks to our right and the inviting turquoise waters of Cane Bay to our left. It occurred to me that Maroon Sanctuary wasn't just about the land. The park's protected boundary extends all the way to the sea, helping shield Cane Bay's coral reefs and the nearby Annaly Bay tide pools from pollution and sediment.
A green sea turtle in the warm waters around St. Croix
I spent the next day reveling in those crystal waters. At Sweet Bottom Dive Center, I rented a mask and fins, and went snorkeling among the parrotfish, angelfish, and wrasse that inhabit the shallow reef just offshore. After watching a sea turtle munch on seagrass, I flipped over onto my back. Above the beach the densely forested peaks of Maroon Country rose in layers, a physical reminder of the many lives and histories held within.
Where to stay
The Waves at Cane Bay, an 11-room boutique hotel built into the rocky shoreline overlooking the bay, was reimagined in 2021 as a stylish oceanfront retreat with private patios, two bars, and the sustainable seafood restaurant Ama. The hotel is a four-minute walk to the beach at Cane Bay and a nine-minute drive to the new Mount Eagle trailhead.
Where to eat
Located directly across the road from Cane Bay, the Landing Beach Bar serves up Caribbean specialties like jerk chicken and fried plantains in a fun, convivial setting. Leatherback Brewing Company is St. Croix's first craft brewery and an unofficial headquarters for the island's mountain-biking community, complete with a full-service bike shop inside.
This article appeared in the December 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
